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Should Teenagers Have Racist Election Tweets In Their Google Results For Life? Jezebel Votes Yes.

Over at the Gawker properties, lady blog Jezebel came up with a creative post-election social media story: Tracie Egan Morrissey decided to make members of the high school set accountable for racist tweets that they sent out after Barack Obama was re-elected. Morrissey writes:

There was an abundance of hate speech on Twitter after Obama’s reelection, with people hurling violent and racial epithets. Many of those tweeters were teenagers whose public Twitter accounts feature their real names and advertise their participation in the sports programs at their respective high schools. Calls were placed to the principals and superintendents of those schools to find out how calling the president—or any person of color, for that matter—a “n*****” and a “monkey” jibes with their student conduct code of ethics. We contacted their school’s administrators with the hope that, if their educators were made aware of their students’ ignorance, perhaps they could teach them about racial sensitivity. Or they could let them know that while the First Amendment protects their freedom of speech, it doesn’t protect them from the consequences that might result from expressing their opinions.

Morrissey collected the offensive tweets, along with the names of the students (the majority of whom are assumedly younger than 18), a gleeful accounting of the activities they’d likely list on college applications — such as their sports teams and pageants — their schools, the responses from school officials — the few who responded expressed disapproval — and the news that in most cases, the student had since deleted their Twitter account.

But that deletion will do them little good. For at least two of the teens, the article, headlined “Racist Teens Forced to Answer for Tweets About the ‘Nigger’ President,” published just four hours ago, is already on the second page of their Google search results. It will surely rise to the first page for all of the teenagers mentioned and will probably haunt them for the rest of their lives, and certainly in the short term. College admissions officers are increasingly researching candidates online after all; these 12 high school students now have a rather nasty addition to their application packages.

The legal system recognizes that young people make mistakes; teens get to shed their youthful indiscretions when their juvenile criminal records are expunged as they enter adulthood. Not so on search engines. Google chairman Eric Schmidt once kiddingly(?) suggested that kids should change their names as adults to get rid of youthful mistakes that get archived on the Internet; as arduous as that seems, at this point, it’s one of the few viable solutions.

I asked Google if they (or their future-thinking X Lab) have come up with any better solutions since then. A spokesperson just pointed me to a Google help page about removing content from your search results — which is only helpful if your social security or credit card number has been exposed by a site. “Think twice before putting personal information online,” it reminds users, a little too late for these teens. Alternately, these kids can get down on their little racist knees and beg Jezebel to add a tag to keep search engines from crawling the page and putting it into their search results.

Jezebel certainly could have done the piece without including the teens’ full names. But the tone of the piece is such that it’s apparent the writer wanted to shame and punish them for broadcasting their ugly, offensive messages. “They surely will have learned the lesson about how their conversations on social media are not private and that their words do, indeed, have an impact,” Morrissey writes.

My colleague Jeff Bercovici reached out to Jessica Coen, the editor of Jezebel, for her stance on the post. Her response is that Jezebel’s shaming tactic is helping to teach naive young people a lesson — about racism and about exposing themselves online.

“Even as a minor, you must be eventually held to some grown-up standards regarding the First Amendment, hate speech, and common sense,” she replied by email. “And I think there’s something larger at play here, and we’re going to see this kind of story over and over again until it’s innately understood that the line between ‘online’ and ‘in real life’ is basically nonexistent. As soon as you are old enough to understand what you’re saying — and high school is definitely past that point — what you say online matters. That’s the way the world works now.”

Coincidentally,ReadWriteWeb published a post today about researchers reflecting on the ethics of using social media content in their research, turning unsuspecting Facebookers and Tweeps into guinea pigs. When it comes to kiddies, one researcher suggests that journalists and academics should “talk to the parents and try to get permission for quotes, especially if you are painting the child in a negative light.” That certainly didn’t happen here, and realistically, given our views toward the public nature of messages that are sent out TO THE WHOLE WORLD ON PUBLIC FORUMS, isn’t something kids can rely on.

This is the world you live in, kids. Everything you say in public — and even private — forums on the Internet has the potential to go more public and to become a permanent part of your Google footprint. Stupid, offhand remarks at 16 may mean you don’t get a job at 26.

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Who’s blackmailing anyone? If you publicly use racial epithets on twitter (the “real life” equivalent of walking down a crowded street yelling racial epithets), someone republishing those tweets is pretty far from blackmail.

I feel sympathy for those kids, no doubt. Someone taught them or they live in communities where it’s not that big of a deal to use the n-word and now they’re learning the hard way that in the real world where successful, educated, and/or decent people live, it’s not looked upon too kindly.

There’s no blackmail here — unless the writer had asked the kids to pay her not to write about their tweets. It’s just an act of public shaming, and an act that will be attached to the search of these kids’ names for the long-foreseeable future.

Okay, so umm… I’m all for civility, but am not really sure how i feel about this. I’ve read plenty of comments directed at white people calling them crackers, white trash, Neanderthal rednecks, F**kin’ honkies, crazy and what ever negative racial comment can be thought of, in some cases including incitement to murder. So what happens when it is tried to apply this standard to others, this public shaming? Will it even be applied to to others as well? Will it be ignored because it is directed at a majority ethnic group? Will it be too politically incorrect to even point it out? Will i be shamed for pointing this out? Will i be seen as a racist because i brought this up. Unfortunately, that is how it seems to work, i fear to say.

No, i am very uncomfortable with this, how i think it will be unevenly applied. Just another step, of many, that is increasing a socially ethnic divide that is also sure to increase animosity across the races rather than to decrease it. An increase of them versus us. Ironic, as i am a conservative more interested in us working together rather than trying to divide the country into differing specialized ranking categories.

What might this teach young kids of any color. I think nothing, other than to increase the animosity and hatred even further and convince them that there is a conspiracy to silence them rather than helping them to slip more effortlessly into the adult world.

They’re kids and you want to mark them for life for actions as if they killed someone. You don’t know that their juvenile opinions won’t change as they mature. And just because someone doesn’t fall in line lock-step from day one with what YOU deem as acceptable behavior or belief doesn’t give you the right to mark them for life. No one made you their keeper! Too many of the judgmental self righteous have their own skeletons.

Blackmail does not have to be about money! Blackmail can be holding something, could be anything, over one’s head if they don’t tow the line. Behavior modification via threats or publicising their names will not work! It will only harden them against you. They will say and do things despite you. They will resist you. They are juveniles who could care less about what may or may not happen years in the future. They don’t think that far in advance. They are not adults, so don’t handle them as if they were!

Not black mail. None of these kids are saying what they said is wrong. Nope they deleted the tweet/say they are “hacked” and or delete the account all together. They are using public internet. Nothing is private. If you can’t handle the consequences you probably shouldn’t say it.

tAll the White people are noticing, anti-racists NEVER justify the elimination of, identifiable non-White national groups using massive immigration and forced assimilation in order to “end all racism”.

“Anti-Racists” only ever attempt to justify the elimination of White children.

So what do White children get out of anti-racism, other than White Genocide?

Anti-Racist is a codeword for Anti-White http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqDL9WR1QT8